Pages of a Letter

Here’s the first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter P:

pages of a letter

afloat on the pond

This is not a standalone haiku but a response verse, written to follow an opening verse by Garry Gay, in the form of tan-renga:

Weeping willow

someone crying

under it

pages of a letter

afloat on the pond

“Renga” are chains of linked verses in the Japanese tradition, and a tan-renga is simply limited to two verses, making a sort of tanka. “Tan-renga” means “short renga,” and in English it is usually a three-line verse followed by a two-liner. As with renga (the modern term is “renku”), the second verse should link to the first verse in some way yet also shift away. In this tan-renga, my verse shifts the subject, at least a little bit, by introducing the setting of the pond, where the willow might be growing, yet still links to the previous verse by suggesting that the person is crying because of something written in the letter, employing what might be considered a narrative shift (which should never be sustained for more than two successive verses in a renku, but can be effective if limited to just two verses—although not all renku purists would agree). Whatever their links and shifts might be, the two poems in a tan-renga should create a kind of synergy together.

I don’t recall ever seeing tan-renga published in the English-language haiku journals, or at most only rarely (before my time?), until after I published a dozen of them, with a short overview of the form, in Frogpond in 1998. The text I published used poems I had included in “Tanned and Healthy,” which was the very first trifold I created, in 1997. That trifold collected a dozen tan-renga I had written in 1996 with attendees at that year’s Yuki Teikei Haiku Society retreat at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. To see the text that appeared in Frogpond, have a look at “Tanned and Healthy: A Dozen Tan-renga from Asilomar.” See also “An Introduction to Tan-Renga.” And while you’re at it, with a friend, how about writing some tan-renga of your own?

I first wrote my two-liner on 6 November 1998, on the I-5 freeway somewhere between Gorman and Sunland, California, just north of Los Angeles (this verse was almost certainly written in Sunland, as it was the last of a set of verses written on that trip). I’m forgetting where I was going, but I used my time in the car to think creatively in response to Garry’s haiku—but not just Garry’s. A note in my notebook says, “The following 21 verses written to create tan-renga with Paul O. Williams and Garry Gay,” with the first ten verses written on I-5 between Bakersfield and Gorman, California (in response to three-liners by Paul), and then the next eleven between Gorman and Sunland (in response to three-liners by Garry). Yes, I was writing down my verses while driving, no doubt using a pad of paper on my thigh (don’t tell anyone). You can read six of my collaborations with Paul at “Six Tan-renga with Paul O. Williams,” and all my poems with Garry at “Eleven Tan-renga with Garry Gay.”

In the single tan-renga presented here, my original first line was “sheaves of a letter,” but on 9 July 2002, in Belmont, California, I changed “sheaves” to “sheets,” and then on 19 July 2002, also in Belmont, I changes “sheets” to “pages.” The word “sheaves” may have seemed a bit too old-fashioned to me, with “pages” suggesting paper more strongly that “sheets.” But in Presence #18, in September 2002, where this tan-renga was published, it seemingly appeared with “sheaves,” but I need to double-check that. In any event, the practice of tan-renga engages one’s collaborative juices, and creates a shared poem that no doubt helps to deepen one’s poetic friendships.

—25 May 2025 (previously unpublished)